Thane au­di­to­rium shuts for re­pairs, no plays this month

THANE: The ill-main­tained wa­ter lines meant to fight fire led to the false ceil­ing col­lapse at Dr Kashinath Ghanekar au­di­to­rium, re­vealed a tech­ni­cal re­port on the in­ci­dent.

This could also have proved that these fire lines were use­less in case of a ma­jor fire in the the­atre, re­veal­ing the Thane Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion’s lack­adaisi­cal at­ti­tude.

The cor­po­ra­tion has not yet be­gun the re­pairs on the the­atre; the work will start only next week. The the­atre will hence be closed for the­atre lovers for the whole of the month.

Ratan Awsar­mol, act­ing city en­gi­neer of TMC, said, “The re­port claims that the amount of wa­ter flow­ing through the fire lines is much more than the per­mis­si­ble limit. This in­di­cates that there is a leak­age in the fire-fight­ing lines. This wa­ter was ab­sorbed into the sound ab­sorb­ing acous­tic foam which col­lapsed un­der the ex­ces­sive weight.”

He said that the wa­ter which flows through the fire lines is me­tered, how­ever, there was no in­di­ca­tion on the me­tre

that ex­cess wa­ter is flow­ing through the lines.

In case of a ma­jor fire, the fire lines would have failed to func­tion, lead­ing to a much big­ger tragedy. The the­atre is merely five years old and the cor­po­ra­tion has not un­der­taken any re­pair works in all these years.

Su­nil Cha­van, ad­di­tional mu­nic­i­pal com­mis­sioner said, “We are in­ves­ti­gat­ing as to why the leak­age went un­no­ticed. The in­take me­ters at the ground floor usu­ally give

the read­ing if ex­cess wa­ter is flow­ing through the fire lines. We will ver­ify, if the me­ter has shown such an alert and also take ac­tion against the per­son in charge.”

“We have asked for an es­ti­mate of the work from the con­trac­tor, which will be sub­mit­ted this week. The work will be­gin from next week and the the­atre will be open for the pub­lic by the end of this month. The cost of the re­pair work will be ap­prox­i­mately Rs25 lakh,” Awsar­mol added.

HT FILE

Dr Kashinath Ghanekar au­di­to­rium in Thane west will un­dergo re­pair work af­ter a false ceil­ing col­lapsed last month.